Books I've read, what I think about them, and what I think about anything else going on in the world.

Monday, July 1, 2013

Read For Free

Reading is my favorite pastime. At least when the weather doesn't permit fishing. I like to read for free and I'm going to tell you how. If you live close to a library you can read for free simply by getting a library card. If no libraries are close, the internet gives you lots of choices. I'll demonstrate two.

The kindle is Amazon's version of an ereader. It's the one I prefer. The Amazon website lists free kindle apps for just about any device you can imagine. Phones, tablets, laptops, and PCs are all covered, in all the major systems from Apple to Windows. You can download an app for your favorite device and you have a free ereader for kindle books.

The nook is Barnes & Nobles version of an ereader. The Barnes & Noble website has a list of free nook apps that let you read nook books for lots of devices. Not as many as the kindle, but they probably have you covered. Download one and you have a free ereader for nook books.
But how much are the books you say? Well, there are tons of free books too. It's easy to find them if you know a simple trick. Both Amazon and Barnes & Noble allow you to search their ebooks by genre. For Amazon, you select kindle store for the search, type science fiction in the search box, and click on Go (click on the pictures to open them up and see the whole screen capture):

You can see from this screen shot that there are over 77K results. The sort was by "new and popular" so this search finds books that cost money. You can change that easily. Just change the sort by to "price: low to high." Now you see free books. For this search on Amazon the first 15 pages of results (240 books) were free. I stopped clicking next at that point.

The Barnes & Noble website works the same way. Select NOOK Books as your area to search, type science fiction in the search box, and click on Search.

The default sort criteria is "top matches" so these books cost money too. Just change the sort by to "price - low to high" and you see the free books. Barnes & Noble shows over 96K results for this search and the first 240 results are free here as well. Again, I stopped hitting next at that point:

So if you like to read, but you don't like to spend money, this is one way to go. Granted, some free books are stinkers, but they're free. Check the reviews and see how many stars a book has before you download it. You can always stop reading after the first chapter and you're not wasting any money.

I've been reading ebooks for years. I buy a paper book once in a while, but most of the time they just sit and collect dust. My kindle, nook, tablet, and computers are the way I read these days.

If you have any questions just leave me comments and I'll try to answer them.